FORBES India: Cognizant’s Executive Vice President of Strategy and Marketing Says AI Platforms Will be at the Core of True Digital Businesses

“The digital tsunami is hitting the shores now, and businesses must meet their ‘Uber moment’,” says Malcolm Frank. Excerpts:

“We see our clients dealing with two shifts at the same time: the first, their master technology architecture, the systems they use to run their companies are going through significant change. Social, mobile analytics and cloud (SMAC) — those technologies are driving tremendous change within our clients’ organizations. At the same time, probably a bigger issue is that their master business architecture is also going through significant change and its being driven by the technology.

What they are going through is, ‘do we have the right business model and the right technology model to compete in our industry going forward.’ That’s the context. As recently as five years ago, when we worked with banks or insurance companies or health care providers, they weren’t asking these big questions. Their questions were much more focused around ‘can you help me increase my customer satisfaction, find efficiencies in the back office.’ So it was about helping them to fine tune the business model that existed in 2010 or 2011. What we’re finding today is that they are asking these very large questions: ‘Do I have the right model to compete for the next 10 years?’

In terms of seeing the change coming, we created a Center for the Future of Work about six years ago. We’ve built out a group called Cognizant Digital Works that starts to bring in the new competencies that are needed. Think of this as a diamond, and there are four pieces that are needed.

One, helping clients to think about what is the business model of the future and what is the technology model.

Two, design thinking has become quite popular thinking, when it comes to problems like redesigning a whole new customer experience.

Third are the technologies. For instance, a manufacturer wants to instrument its machines and use the Internet-of-things technologies. We are finding that our clients want to do that but don’t know how. Digital Works also looked at understanding skill sets, methodologies, price points and contracting models. “Collaboratories” were built to which customers were invited to brainstorm on new ideas and solutions.

Another area of technology that is building is artificial intelligence. Clients are just starting to recognize that the core of a true digital business is an artificial intelligence platform and they need help in making sense of the AI world and to apply it in their context. AI is a significant double-edged sword: it will automate processes on the one hand (reducing the need for human intervention), but will also enhance the human effort in some areas. For instance, people are also using AI to create super sales people, for instance, by not replacing them, but by giving them all of the information they need, at their fingertips to become much more proficient.

The final piece of the puzzle is industry expertise. Highly regulated businesses such as pharmaceuticals or insurance, for instance, require the technology services providers to possess very deep understanding of how they work, including the constraints placed by the regulations.

Strategy, design, technology and industry expertise — you’ve to bring those four pieces together.”

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